Novelty pop songs don’t come much more annoying than this, at least without children and bagpipes. Except they do – because Convoy prompted an even worse “parody” version. (more…)

This is the best, best-known, and best-selling song ever written by Tom T. Hall, who died last week. It’s also the only hit for Jeannie C. Riley. (more…)

Nanci Griffith (6 July 1953-13 August 2021) (more…)

I would be being unfair to myself – and Dolly – if I failed to include her greatest song, yet I had somehow neglected it until now. So here it is.
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The life story of Waylon Jennings is the stuff of country music legend. And it’s all true, from his youth picking cotton in Texas to teenage radio DJ to playing bass with Buddy Holly – giving up his plane ticket on that fateful day the music died. (more…)

If Jimmie Rodgers bridged the gap between blues and country, then The Carter Family did the same for folk and bluegrass. (more…)

Jimmie Rodgers might not have been the first country musician to make a record – that was Eck Robertson. But with his Blue Yodels he was country music’s first superstar. (more…)

Eck Robertson was the first country musician to make a record. He might have been called “the Hendrix of the fiddle” if only he’d been born half a century later.

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Break-up songs don’t come much more devastating than The End Of The World, which gave country legend Skeeter Davis her only UK hit in 1963. (more…)

With his big hat and catchy tunes, George Strait was my gateway drug into what the old joke calls my two of my favourite types of music – country and western. (more…)